At WMConf MTV 2019, Frode Park shed light on the evolving landscape of crafting effective titles, snippets, and result previews—key components that shape how users interact with search engine results. His insights reveal not just the technical underpinnings, but the thoughtful balance of relevance, user choice, and content diversity that drives modern search experience design.
The Importance of Result Previews in Search
Historically, search results were presented as a simple list of "10 blue links," accompanied only by a title, snippet, and URL. Today, the search results page is a bustling ecosystem of diverse content types, all aimed at helping users quickly identify the most relevant pages. Frode explained that the shift required rethinking the fundamental goals of result previews.
Four Pillars of Effective Previews
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Relevance: Above all, previews must align closely with the user’s query intent. Irrelevant previews confuse users and degrade the search experience.
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User Choice: Result snippets and titles should empower users to make informed decisions on which link to follow. Clear, descriptive previews guide users effectively toward their goal.
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Depth of Content: Many valuable websites contain vast quantities of rich information. It is crucial to illuminate this depth through previews so users understand the breadth of content available before clicking through.
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Diversity of Content: The web hosts a wide spectrum of content — from images and videos to forums, tables, and lists. Result previews must reflect this diversity to serve different user preferences and query intents.
Algorithm-Driven Enhancements
The team at Google worked on improving how snippets and titles are generated, leveraging algorithms that dynamically tailor previews in response to the user’s query. This ensures that the snippet highlights the most relevant parts of a page related to what the user is searching for. As queries change, preview content intelligently adapts.
Visual Additions: Images and Videos
Around 2016-2017, it became evident that incorporating images into search results significantly helped users differentiate between options. Frode shared that algorithms could extract relevant images from pages to accompany snippets without overshadowing the primary text.
Beyond single images, image galleries allow users to glimpse a page’s visual content spectrum when one image alone isn’t sufficient to represent the site’s offerings. Similarly, videos can be highlighted on result previews if they play a major role in page content, either as central elements or supportive features.
Site Structure and Sitelinks
Another advancement involves displaying site links beneath the main snippet, extracted algorithmically to represent internally important pages. For example, a restaurant’s search result might feature direct links to menus, private events, or contact pages. These site links help users quickly navigate to the most relevant section within a site and reveal the site’s content depth.
Image cycling for site links was another innovation added to enrich previews when site links alone do not fully satisfy the user’s needs.
Entity Facts and Forums
To further reflect content richness, entity facts—concise and verifiable pieces of information about well-known subjects—are sometimes displayed within snippets. This technique signals the legitimacy and depth of a site’s content.
Forums, including various Q&A sites, also benefit from specialized previews. While structured markup helps signaling forum content, many forums lack it, making algorithmic extraction and display of forum posts essential. This improves user awareness of community-based discussions relevant to their queries.
Structured Data: Tables and Lists
When a page prominently features tables or lists, highlighting these structures in the preview can offer users an immediate, clearer understanding of the content. Proper HTML markup strongly guides how these previews are constructed, offering an opportunity for site owners to optimize visibility.
Summary of Best Practices for Titles and Snippets
- Prioritize relevance: Ensure every preview fundamentally connects to the user’s query.
- Leverage attribution: Clearly present the site source to build trust and facilitate informed decisions.
- Show content depth: Use sitelinks, entity facts, and forum post snippets to express the variety and breadth of information.
- Embrace diversity: Incorporate image and video previews, as well as structured data like tables and lists, to cater to different types of content consumers.
- Use structured markup: Whenever possible, provide structured data to improve the quality and specificity of previews.
The takeaways from Frode Park’s presentation highlight an important evolution: titles and snippets are no longer simple text labels, but carefully crafted gateways that guide users through the rich and varied web ecosystem. By focusing on relevance, clarity, and diverse content expression, search engines create more engaging, informative, and user-friendly result previews that ultimately improve the search experience for everyone.
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